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February 1, 2010

On the Road

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:15 pm

This morning was our first load-in. We finished load-out from the Guthrie around 2:30am, and after saying goodbye to our local crew, were on the road and in bed by around 3:30.

At around 7:45am I was greeted by a voice outside the curtain of my bunk saying, “Good morning! Happy first load-in! It’s one degree outside!”

In some sort of tour-booking cruelty, after two months in Minneapolis we’re going north, to Moorhead, MN. It’s right next to Fargo, if that helps you place it on the scale of places-you-know-are-generally-cold-in-February.

It is indeed cold, but not as windy as Minneapolis tends to be. The entire surface of the ground is covered in about a half-inch sheet of ice, and it’s been snowing all day. To add to this, our bus could not park near the theatre, so it’s either a long walk or a short drive away. Nick and I searched for it for an hour, missing it by just a few yards at one point, but we did get to see the four corners of the campus of the University of Minnesota at Moorhead while looking. That was hours ago, and my feet are still frozen.

We’ve been working on our signage today, and once we leave the bus, we’ll be hanging it up, and then getting ready for the arrival of the cast. The crew here seems great — very eager and friendly, so I think it will be a fun show.

I already miss our Guthrie friends a lot, but I’m also excited to see who we’ll meet in all our other cities.


Tour of Our Bus

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:59 pm

Nick and I have another video blog for you — this time a tour of our bus. This is where we live, with our TD, lighting, props, sound and wardrobe supervisors, and of course our one-and-only bus driver, Bart.

We shot this video the day the bus arrived, after having only spent a few minutes checking it out, so you can see us figuring it out for the first time too. Most of Pioneer Coach’s buses have a similar layout, but each bus is a little bit different, so finding how light switches, coolers, appliances, thermostat controls, etc. work takes a little exploration.


January 29, 2010

Final Guthrie Week

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 12:57 am

This week I transitioned to calling the show off my new script, with the cues color-coded and typed into the script. I had the script done since previews, but mostly due to running out of paper, and our hole punch getting temporarily lost, I hadn’t had a chance to finish it until this week. It’s always scary to call from a different script, but it’s actually very easy to read. Right away it actually felt more comfortable than the script I’ve been calling from for weeks, which is pretty amazing.

At the same time, I called my first performance with the video monitor turned off. Since tech I’ve used the infrared view for five cues that occur in blackouts or near-blackouts. Knowing that I won’t have that luxury on the road, I have spent the whole run here studying what happens in the dark, looking for ways to call the cues that are reliable and can be done without seeing in the dark. As the cast is now comfortable with their blocking, they are reaching their positions in plenty of time, and it has been very consistent for weeks.

All last week, I had the monitor on, and would close my eyes until right before I called the cue, at which point I would glance at the monitor to check that it was OK. Now I have completely weaned myself off of it. At the end of the first act I will have our prop supervisor giving me a “clear” stage right to make sure that Tybalt has made it offstage before the lights come up. Today for the first time, our local crew member Craig gave me the clear so we could get used to it, though it has been very easy for me to do without it here. However, at other venues where the distance to get offstage may be longer, or the actor may not be as sure of where he’s going, it will be a good idea to get a clear.

Today was our last student matinee — here, at least. We have many more on the road, some of which are our one-hour version of the show.

Today before the show Nick and I were hanging out by the production link, which is the giant hall/bridge area that connects the scene shop across the street with the two mainstage theatres here. The Scottish Play is in the middle of their tech, and we were getting an update on their progress from Trevor. As usual the subject turned to how awesome their set is, and I was saying that I had seen it on their model, and on the video monitors in the green room. Trevor asked if I had time for a tour, and he showed me all of the cool stuff they have, while the crew did their morning notes. Amazingly, in four months working here, I had never actually had the opportunity to set foot in the thrust theatre, though I’ve seen many pictures of it. It was really cool to finally get to see it. From the stage it feels incredibly intimate, although it’s actually much bigger than our theatre. I wish I could see a production in it, but I can see already why its design is so much talked about.

Tonight was our last day of rehearsal for our Alice in Wonderland reading tomorrow morning, and we ran through the show and finished early. Our Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director, Margot and Ian, just arrived in town for the reading, and treated the cast to drinks to celebrate the end of our long rehearsal weeks.

Between all of these events, I think we all feel the pull of the road growing stronger than the inertia of our long stay here. Every day there are more signs that our time is coming soon. Our crew is here and trailing their local counterparts, tomorrow we get our company manager, we’re almost done with rehearsals (for now), our touring light board and sound package have been delivered. Everyone is packing, sending boxes home, and cleaning their apartments. Very soon our truck and buses will be here.


January 26, 2010

R&J Cast Interviews

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:34 am

The Guthrie recently posted this video blog of our cast being interviewed by Matt Amendt, who was our Henry last year, about their expectations of life on the road. It was filmed about three weeks ago, when we were in tech, and Matt was in town and came to hang out with us at the tech dinner.


January 25, 2010

Minneapolis Winds Down

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 2:39 am

Tomorrow is our last day off in Minneapolis. It’s the last “normal” day off we’re going to have for a long time, as in a day off in a city you know something about, where you have an apartment and something resembling a normal existence.

Nick and I are going in the grocery run, but we don’t need groceries. We need some personal items, and a long list of supplies for the road box. Tonight between shows we did inventory of our first aid kits. We have five of them (stage left, stage right, miscellaneous, “lady products”, and a basic kit that stays on the crew bus). So a lot of our shopping is for restocking the medical supplies.

I have some other loose ends to tie up myself. I’m shipping some stuff home that I don’t need anymore, as well as more Caribou Coffee that my parents and my aunt really liked when I sent them some for Christmas.

I also plan to do as much laundry as possible to take advantage of the free and accessible laundry here. A few nights ago I cleaned up the apartment a little to make it easier to pack, and moved my suitcase from the bottom of the bedroom closet to the couch in the living room, ready to receive items. I now have some clean clothes I know I won’t wear again that are piled next to it.

Looking Back

It’s hard to believe our time here is coming to an end. I remember very well when Nick and I arrived, before there was any snow on the ground, and our show was just a script, a model and some renderings. Now it’s on stage eight shows a week, and has already been seen by 10,669 people as of today. We’ve achieved the main task we had here — to go from nothing to a finished show, and now it’s time for us to move on and take it to other audiences.

It’s impossible to say what the next year will bring, but at this point it seems probable to me that I’ll be back in about 10 months, so while I’ll miss everybody here, I’m not leaving with the feeling that I’ll never be back again. There are people here who are some of my favorite collaborators in my career, and who I consider friends. But it’s also the nature of the business anywhere that we work usually with strangers, and form very strong bonds over a short period of time, and then we move on, and may or may not have the opportunity to cross paths again. It was great to return here this year to a number of people I already knew, and I hope this won’t be the last time.

Looking forward

Nick and I have been talking on Facebook with Bart. He’s on his way here, and will arrive on the 31st, which is the day we leave. I can’t wait to move into our rolling home. This tour has a lot of 1-nighters, so the bus will be even more of a home than it was last year.

Most of our crew (who we haven’t met) arrive on Tuesday and will be at work on Wednesday, learning the show for the first time. By Friday everyone will be in town, and we’ll have dinner as a group (probably Saturday) to get to know each other and discuss how we’re going to run things on the road.

I’ve been talking over email with our TD, Bobby (who I haven’t met yet), and our lighting supervisor, Devon (who was here for tech), forming a plan of attack for an upcoming venue with tricky dimensions. Discussing what pipe the first electric will be on in some theatre four cities from now has brought the reality that the tour is starting to my attention. It’s a really exciting time. Every time I walk past the theatre where I can see the parking lot by the loading dock, I look for our truck and buses, even though I know they won’t be showing up for close to a week. It doesn’t matter, every time I turn the corner I wish they were sitting there. It’s the beginning of the feeling I find so fascinating about touring — at once being sad to leave a place that’s been great, but burning with a desire to keep moving and seeing what’s next.


January 23, 2010

5-Show Weekend

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 1:53 am

Now we enter the heart of a 5-show weekend. That term can make any theatre person cower. But for us, I think a lot of us are looking forward to it, because it means we don’t have rehearsal for a few days, and can focus on one show for a while. It’s still a long day, maybe longer, but it feels more straightforward.

After the whole week of early matinees and late rehearsals, we switched it around today and rehearsed for 5 hours during the day and then had a show at night. We also got our swine flu shots, courtesy of the Guthrie, prior to rehearsal. We had our regular flu shots in New York, way back in October, before our contracts began, but the H1N1 shots were not available until now. I’m glad we were able to get them before heading out on the road.

The weather has been unseasonably warm here for the last couple weeks. Tonight after the show it was actually raining a bit! But the downside of that was that the entire city is covered in a slick sheet of ice.

Tonight Nick and I had drinks after the show with Ashley and our intern from last year, Meaghan, who just arrived to visit for a few days. It was great to see her again and catch up. As we left the bar, Nick showed me the back way back to our apartments, which winds through alleys in the industrial neighborhood we’re in. I’d say we live about 5 blocks from the bar. It took us 15 minutes of skating, shuffling, and carefully choosing our path over the ice to make it home — and we didn’t fall once!


January 17, 2010

Game Day

I call this: On the Road Again — Posted by KP @ 1:03 pm

Here in Minneapolis we’ve been living 2 blocks from the Metrodome through most of football season. Today as I walked to the theatre I was greeted by a sea of purple going the other way.

Here’s the view from the crazy yellow windows on the Guthrie’s 9th floor, just before kickoff.

I enjoy watching football but I don’t have really strong allegiances, so I’ve been rooting for the Vikings all year, knowing they would be my “home team” for the second half of the season.


January 16, 2010

In the Run

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 3:00 am

We’ve now done 3 official performances at the Guthrie. The day after opening, the rest of our out-of-town collaborators took off, and now it’s just the traveling company here in Minneapolis, along with visits from some of our local creative team — such as Andrew Wade, our vocal coach / guru, who has continued to surprise us by showing up in person to conduct his famous pre-show warm-up, when he has had free time from Macbeth rehearsals downstairs.

But for the most part, this has become like another stop on the tour. Everyone has gone home, and Corey and I are now maintaining the show. We don’t yet have our touring crew here (mostly because there’s nothing for them to do because we’re in a union house). They will show up a few days before we leave to learn their tracks and then load the show out.

To catch you up on what’s been happening since we started previews…

We’ve had great houses, and our notes from each preview were minimal, and the rehearsals during the day very easy-going. We were still tweaking things here and there, but there was no great rush or panic about it.

On the night of the final preview, Nick and I took Ashley to dinner as our official thank you for her help throughout our process. However, she hasn’t been needed that much for Macbeth, so she’s still assigned to us for the time being. In addition to helping us as we go back into rehearsal for Alice in Wonderland and the one-hour version of R&J that we will perform for younger audiences, she’s going to observe as much as possible of calling the show and Nick’s deck track (neither of which are particularly challenging or unusual, unfortunately).

Opening night was fun. We had just a few hours of rehearsal, but the rest of our time was taken up with preparations for the opening night events, and organizing and distributing the opening night gifts for the cast and creative team. It was kind of fun getting to play Santa Claus, sneaking into all the dressing rooms while everyone was out to dinner and leaving the bright red Acting Company tote bags, with two luggage tags and an Acting Company frisbee inside.

On Fireworks

On the day off, Laura (who plays Juliet) went to speak to one of the schools that came to our invited dress. She revealed that their favorite part of the show was the fireworks in the party scene. I found this absolutely hysterical since I think of the fireworks as some sort of stage management torture device, rather than something I should be patting myself on the back for. Basically instead of the lights and sound being programmed with a delay so they execute together, the sound cue of the rocket whistling up and then exploding is called first, and then I call the light cue to create the flash with the explosion sound. I managed to get them to put a delay on the first one because it executes with another sound cue, making the rocket almost impossible to hear. The first time I called the show from the booth was during the invited dress, where I realized I needed a dedicated monitor with just sound effects in it to call it well. It was nice to find out that the kids thought the fireworks looked good, even when I couldn’t hear what I was doing.

I had to go through this exact same thing last year with The Spy, in which several military flares were sent up in identical fashion, except it was even better because we only did the show like once a month, so I had even less time to get good at it! This show has about 8 fireworks effects more-or-less back-to-back, and based on my experience from last year, I’m getting decent at it pretty quickly. It’s pretty much the only thing I do in the show that’s difficult or in any way flashy from a stage management perspective, so hearing that it was memorable makes me feel good.

I know that all of my contributions help tell the story and elicit emotion in the audience, but it can be an adjustment to go from cueing falling chandeliers and towering pillars of flame, to calling nothing but graceful scene change light and underscoring, that are most effective when the audience isn’t really aware of them happening. So I do look forward to the fireworks as the one point in the show where everyone gets to admire the cool technical effect.

As the show settles in, I can now take time to start working on the finer nuances of my cues and really fitting them into the way the show breathes. There is an art to that as well, although it requires a little more patience to reap the rewards of it than the immediate positive feedback of getting a chandelier to explode perfectly on cue. I’m looking forward to really starting to work in depth on making each cue perfect.

Student Matinee

Yesterday we had our first student matinee, which went really well. We also had our first talkback after the show. I absolutely love doing talkbacks, so I always look forward to this. Corey did a great job moderating. He had also done a pre-show session with the students, so he had given them things to think about and discuss after seeing the show. I’m always very impressed how well the kids are prepared when they see the show, which is a testament to their teachers and the people in the education departments of the Acting Company and the Guthrie. On another note, it’s also fun to do talkbacks with a new company of actors because you usually learn new things about your coworkers by listening to their answers.


January 12, 2010

Daily Routine (show mode)

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 8:28 pm

A rundown of my routine during performances at the Guthrie.

1 1/2 Hours Before Curtain

Hang around theatre, make sure everything is prepared for the return of the actors. The stage should be clear for warm-up and props ready for fight call. This is the trouble-shooting time.

1 Hour Before Curtain

Voluntary warm-up begins onstage. Invite the cast to the stage for warm-up.

45 Minutes Before Curtain

Call the cast to the stage for fight call. The fight captain runs fight call, and we mostly stand off to the side making sure everything goes smoothly.

35 Minutes Before Curtain

With the conclusion of fight call, I holler up to the booth where our light board op puts us into blackout check. This turns off all stage and house lights, and if anything is amiss (lights on that shouldn’t be, or spill from improperly masked running lights), it will show itself. This usually takes about 5 seconds to establish that it is indeed dark, and for me to call for the lighting preset.

After we’re in preset, I check the stage for debris or people’s personal belongings they may have left on or near the stage during warm-up, such as coats and water bottles. I check that any onstage props and furniture are on their spikes and properly set, then invite Nick to inspect for himself (it’s really his stage, so unless he’s busy I want him to have a chance to approve it). Once Nick and I agree that we’re ready to open, I tell the house manager that the house can open, and our sound engineer plays a “welcome” announcement over the PA, telling the patrons in the lobby that seating will begin.

30 Minutes Before Curtain

The famous “half hour.” First, I call half hour over the backstage PA. Then I gather up my belongings and head to the booth, where I will park myself for probably the next three hours. I set up my computer, and at least at this point where we’re transitioning from daytime rehearsals in the house, I carry my headset and script up with me.

Then I hang out and/or blog until I have to interrupt myself temporarily to call “15”.

7 Minutes to Curtain

I switch my radio from the “SM” channel for our theatre to “FOH” (front of house), and ask the house manager if we expect a delayed curtain due to late seating, traffic, weather, etc. This helps me plan the five minute and places calls so the cast isn’t standing around if we know we’ll be starting late.

5 Minutes to Curtain

I call “5”. This can be adjusted early or late depending on the expected actual start time.

At Curtain Time

I call “places.” Like the 5-minute call, this can vary, although unless something unexpected happens, I try to make it literally 5 minutes after the “5”. At this point I check in with the crew on headset and make sure everyone is ready to begin. As the cast arrives on the deck, Nick begins a head-count so we know when we have places.

When We Have Places

When we actually have places, Nick tells me, and I radio the house manager that I’m ready. She will either tell me that we need to hold for people being seated, or will order the staff to close the doors. The door people radio back that their doors are closed, and then the house manager confirms that we’re OK to begin, and wishes us a good show. And then away we go!


January 11, 2010

Post-Tech Day Off!

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 9:29 pm

We have finished tech, we did a very successful first dress rehearsal, then turned around about three hours later and did our final dress rehearsal for 300 high school theatre students.

On Saturday we had our first preview, last night we had our second preview. Before each show we spent five hours making changes to lighting, sound, staging, choreography, and fight choreography. All the shows have gone very smoothly, and the rehearsals during the day have been low-stress affairs. I’m very pleased with how it’s going.

I planned my week so that I would have today totally off as my reward for surviving tech and first previews. I bought 2 weeks of groceries last week, and got up early on Saturday to do some needed shopping downtown.

Today I got out of bed around 1:00 and then spent nearly 2 hours dealing with the 15 emails I woke up to. Having Mondays off is kind of annoying because everyone else has just gotten back to work and has lots of questions and things to get moving on.

Other than that I’ve been taking it easy until dinnertime. Tonight I updated our electronic script with a few small cuts and changes we made in the past week. I also found some small typos and formatting errors when I began using my calling script at the beginning of tech, because before that I’ve just been dealing with the original script we began rehearsals with and making the changes in pencil, except for a few particular pages which required me to print out the updated page.

With that done, I’m now starting the electronic calling script. I have no intention of using it until after opening night, as switching scripts from the one you learned to call the show on is kind of a scary thing. Ashley is staying with us longer than we thought, and among other things Nick and I have planned, she’s going to learn to call the show even though she wouldn’t actually be able to put it into practice. At the invited dress she sat next to me in the booth and updated our per-scene running times during the show. Once the new script is done, she can be another eye reading it along with the show to look out for any problems.


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